


Aligned

by canis_m



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Episode S19:E11 Flight Risk, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Getting Together, really a lot of grossness, the most domestic first date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 15:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15732459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canis_m/pseuds/canis_m
Summary: If Olivia changed her mind about that steak dinner.  Canon divergence set after 19x11 "Flight Risk."





	Aligned

Rafael was lounging on her office sofa, flipping through the latest _Ledger,_ flaunting his striped socks for the world to see. At the moment only Olivia was looking. It was past quitting time; she could barely remember why he’d come by in the first place. 

He snorted at something on the page. "Since when does the _Ledger_ run horoscopes?"

"They just started. Read Aquarius?"

His side-eye reproved her. "You don’t believe in this crap, do you?"

"Read it anyway."

He made a little show of straightening the paper, clearing his throat. "'That leap you've been considering? Now's the time to take it. Don't let past disappointments dictate your present course.’"

Olivia made a noncommittal noise. "Read yours."

"Scorpio: 'Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Patience will be rewarded when you expect it least.’ Hah, maybe that indictment has legs, after all."

He was right: she didn’t put stock in the stars, or in the prognostic powers (however uncanny) of whatever intern was bullshitting the horoscopes, or in much of anything but her own sense of rightness. Not when it came to important things. She closed her laptop. 

"Still hungry for that steak?" she asked.

"I’m always up for…" 

Rafael stopped. He sat up abruptly, feet slipping from the sofa’s edge as if he’d stumbled. Olivia watched confusion in his face unspool.

A moment passed before he found his voice again. When he did, it came out changed. "What, what about Noah?"

Olivia tipped her head. "I’ll call Lucy, see if she can watch him until after dinner. If not—" She took off her glasses. "There’s always carry-out. I’ve got a nice bottle of Laurel Glen Counterpoint. If you don’t mind eating at my place?"

Rafael re-folded the _Ledger._ His fingers didn’t quite shake. 

"I don’t," he said, eyes on her. "Not at all."

*

They bundled up in their coats. As they exited her office Olivia touched Rafael's back lightly. It was an ordinary touch, unremarkable, but she could tell by the way he held himself afterward that he felt it differently. Differently and more. 

She called Lucy and checked in on Noah. "Hey, I know it's getting late. Any chance you could stay through dinner? Not an emergency if you can't." Lucy started to apologize. "No, no apologies necessary. I'm on my way, just stopping to pick up something to eat. Thanks, Lucy." She ended the call, glancing at Rafael. "Well, we're on for plan B."

He nodded. In the elevator he kept himself carefully contained. Only his thumbs moved, convulsively, inside his padded leather gloves. From time to time he blinked like a man unconvinced of his present reality.

"Liv," he said. His voice was small. "Is this. Are we—"

She didn't pretend not to understand the question. In his shoes she would've been uncertain, too. 

"It is," she said, "if you want it to be."

The look he turned on her was soft and exposed, with an ache behind it just this side of rue. It was enough to wring the heart of anyone who saw it, let alone her. His head shook helplessly. 

"You know I do."

She pressed her lips together, nodding. She took him by the arm, stroking over his coat sleeve, until the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. 

The cooling blue of twilight lingered on the skyline. Ruth's Chris was within walking distance, even in the winter chill. Their shoulders bumped as they kept pace with one another. Rafael's breath clouded the air as he called in. 

"For carry-out. The New York strip and the petite filet. Both rare."

"And a Caesar salad," said Olivia. 

"And a Caesar salad."

"And, ooh, a side of the, the Brussels sprouts." He made a face, but relayed the order. "They're caramelized. With bacon," she told him, after he'd ended the call. "It wouldn't kill you to eat something green. Noah likes them."

Rafael blinked with chagrin. "Should I have ordered something for him?"

"He can share mine, and there's mac and cheese at home."

He relaxed for about two seconds, then looked aghast. "Dessert," he blurted. Olivia stifled laughter behind her glove. 

"I was wondering. Did I throw you off your game that much?" When he only looked increasingly woeful, she linked her arm with his. "Luckily for you, Chez Benson is well stocked with ice cream, fudge stripe cookies, and marginally grown-up chocolate."

The steakhouse was packed, the banquette near the bar crammed with waiting patrons. Rafael found a narrow space at its far end where they could fit if they sat close together, knee to knee. He studied the menu as if he wasn't convinced they'd ordered enough dinner. 

"Place has a decent happy hour," he murmured.

"What would you know about happy hour? You always work through it."

"Not _always."_ He put his phone and the online menu away. "You're not exactly hitting the bars these days yourself."

"Not unless I'm meeting up with you." A party of two got up from the banquette, leaving space for Olivia to scoot down if she wanted to. She stayed where she was. "I love coming home to Noah. It'd be nice to get out now and then, too. Feels like I ask too much of Lucy as it is."

"Do you have another sitter?"

"Other than Rollins? Not one I really like." _Really trust_ was what she meant, and Rafael knew it. He raised his head. 

"My mother claims she's retiring at the end of the school year. She's said it before, but I think she means it this time." He glanced at her sideways, gauging. "She'd love to meet Noah."

When she followed the line of thought to its conclusion, Olivia raised her eyebrows high. "Are you volunteering your mom for babysitting duty?"

"That would be presumptuous of me," he said hastily. "In more ways than one." He paused. "She does love kids, she..."

"Isn't a kidnapper?"

He winced. Hard enough that Olivia could tell he'd had no intention of bringing up Sheila. "I was gonna say 'wishes I'd had some.' She was half my age when she had me. Younger. Not that that was an easy road."

 _Not easy_ wasn't the half of it, Olivia was sure, even if he'd never gone into detail. She nudged her shoulder into his. "Even so, I'm glad she did. I'm a big fan of the result."

He looked so flummoxed that she had to duck her head to hide a grin. If they hadn't been in so public a place, so close to the precinct, she would've thrown her arm around him, maybe ruffled the back of his absurdly perfect hair. Her fingers twinged with the urge to do it. 

When their order appeared, she pulled out her card before he could reach for his wallet. "Nuh-uh. My invitation. You can get next time."

A smile broke across Rafael's face, almost loopy. "There's a next time?"

She gave him a look as she handed him the smaller carry-out bag. "Think of it this way. At this point you'd have to work really hard to screw up your chances."

*

Noah did, in fact, like the Brussels sprouts. They became the hottest commodity at dinner—an outcome Rafael never would've predicted at any meal involving 16 ounces of flame-broiled beef. Then again, he never would've predicted that tonight's meal would involve both Bensons and a heap of shocking, smothering happiness, one that made him feel the periodic need to flounder and gulp for air. The evening was full of surprises. The steak was unsurprisingly delicious. Everything was delicious. He could've eaten a bag of styrofoam peanuts and rated them five stars. 

He set down his fork and reached for his wine glass, trying to ground himself. "You know, Noah," he said, "when I was your age, we didn't have these fancy 'caramelized' sprouts."

Noah tilted his curly head. "What's caramelized?"

"Means they put caramel on them."

Noah's bullshit detector, however rudimentary, went off. His mother was teaching him well. "Does not," he said, giggling. "If there was caramel on them they'd be gooey."

"I can't argue with that logic."

"You're right, Noah," said Olivia. She sliced another tender portion of her filet to supplement the mac and cheese and sprouts on Noah's plate. "Caramelized is when veggies are cooked a certain way, extra slowly. It makes all their sugars come out, so they turn sweet. Even if they weren't sweet to begin with."

Rafael hoisted an impaled sprout on his fork. "These were not sweet to begin with. They were jerks."

"Hey, you." Olivia's eyes narrowed. "Keep your anti-veggie prejudice to yourself."

"Prejudice is _bad,"_ affirmed Noah.

Rafael popped the sprout into his mouth and chewed. "Prejudice is bad, and this is the highest form of Brussels sprout. Fit for human consumption."

"I'll drink to that," Olivia said. In the seat across from him she was smiling: to herself, at the three of them, a small, persistent smile that kept slipping its lid. Rafael returned it, or a dazed, off-kilter version of it, as much as he dared. 

It went to his head—the look on her face, the understanding that he'd somehow had a hand in putting it there. The suggestion—hard to credit, coming as it did after so long, but impossible to discredit when it came from her—that this seat at the table could be his. Not just tonight, if he didn't screw up royally, and if whatever power had moved her continued to move her. If she continued to hold open the door.

The lamp above the table glowed golden. It cast glints on the silverware, the dishes, the bottle of Cabernet, on Olivia's hair. They swam in Rafael's eyes like a mirage. It couldn't have been the wine; he'd only had a glass and a half. Olivia's was glass nearly empty. He reached to fill it for her, feeling that he was pouring out his heart.

*

After dinner came ice cream sundaes and two madcap rounds of Uno, in which Noah doled out Draw Four Wilds with relentless glee. ("He learned from Aunt Amanda," Olivia told Rafael, sotto voce. "Not from me.") On the heels of his victory she announced bedtime. Noah protested. He latched onto Rafael, clinging to his pant leg. The protest verged on a whine. 

"But what about yoga?"

Rafael's eyebrow twitched.

"We do relaxing yoga sometimes before bed," explained Olivia. "Helps everyone wind down." Letting go of Rafael, Noah flung himself into child's pose on the living room floor in helpful demonstration. "How about we skip yoga for tonight, okay, sweetie? Uncle Rafa can't join in."

"Why not?"

"Didn't bring my yoga pants, amigo," said Rafael, right on cue, with every indication of regret.

To Noah's mind this was no obstacle. "You don't need pants! Go commando!"

As he leapt out of child's pose into chair pose, Olivia caught him by the shoulders and began to wrangle him toward the hall. "I think we're not a hundred percent clear on what 'going commando' means. Are we, bud?"

"Commandooo!" 

"I will pass on this session of pantsless yoga," said Rafael, "but don't hold back on my account." 

He said it so straightfacedly that Olivia shot a look over her shoulder. Pure innocence blinked back. Meanwhile, sensing the inevitability of bedtime, Noah changed tacks. His brown eyes widened to maximum pleading. 

"Can Uncle Rafa read me a story?"

"I don't know," said Olivia, amused in spite of herself. "Why don't you ask him nicely?"

"Uncle Rafaaa, please—?"

In the end Noah wheedled a story out of both of them. Olivia leaned in the doorway as Rafael read from _Dog Man Unleashed,_ doing all the voices. She stepped in to take over, running a hand caressingly over his arm as she passed. After another chapter Noah's eyes finally drooped shut.

Olivia closed the bedroom door. She straggled to the kitchen, then to the living room where Rafael waited on the couch. Before dinner he'd taken off his tie, and his jacket after; he sat now with shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. The lines of his suspenders drew the eye, distracting as always. He'd found a stray Lego somewhere, bright red, on the floor or stuck between cushions, and was rotating it incessantly between his fingers. He looked like he was trying not to vibrate. Or to levitate. 

Maybe yoga was in order, after all, Olivia thought. Pantsless or otherwise. She considered whether draping her arms around him from behind might soothe him, or send him straight into cardiac arrest. 

The wine glasses in her hands precluded the experiment. She settled for sitting down beside him, closer than she would have a day ago. She set the glasses on the coffee table, along with wedges of dark chocolate—the kind Noah would wrinkle his nose at—on a tiny plate. 

Rafael sat up straighter. He deposited the Lego on the table and reached for the wine. "Second dessert? I like your style."

"Last of the bottle. Might as well finish it off."

He picked up a wedge of chocolate and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. "Go team." 

Olivia nibbled hers more slowly, sipping the last of the Counterpoint between bites. She eyed him. "Thought you were gonna referee some pantsless yoga, huh? Call penalties for illegal poses?"

"Illegally sexy poses," said Rafael, still chewing. "A man can dream. I'm feeling encouraged to dream big just now."

Olivia smiled. "You should be." She stretched out her legs and flexed her toes. "Thanks for—" She waved in a feeble spiral, encompassing the entire night. "Not exactly a dream date, I know."

"If I said 'It was, believe it or not,' would that be too ingratiating, or just...concerning?"

"It'd be sweet." 

"Like Brussels sprouts?"

"Yeah. Maybe next time we can shoot for actually going out."

He turned on the sofa to face her. His voice dropped to a hush, husky with fervor. Earnestness darkened his gaze. "I want to take you out. I want to stay in. I want to do things with all three of us, and things with just you. I want all of it, Liv."

She liked the sound of that, and told him so. "Me too." She set down her glass and reached for his hand to tangle their fingers. "Know what else I want?" He waited, attentive. "I want to disclose." 

Whatever Rafael had been expecting, that wasn't it. His mouth fell open. 

"Doesn't have to be tomorrow," she said, for clarity's sake, "but soon. I don't want to put it off, I don't want—cases called into question, or my behavior, or yours. We haven't done anything wrong and I don't want to act like we have."

"Do it by the book?"

"By the book."

Rafael kept blinking, as if she'd knocked him for a loop again. She could almost see the cartoon bluebirds tweeting in circles over his head. He seemed to grope for words, with less than usual facility. 

"Did, did something change?" he got out at last. His voice took on a edge of chiding. "Don't tell me it was the horoscopes."

"No, but I hope whoever wrote those is getting paid." 

Olivia put down her glass. She should've known he wouldn't let her off the hook without some soul-baring; of course he'd want to suss out what had turned the tide. She squeezed his hand, trying to gather all the honesty she owed him. 

"It's been a long time coming. During everything with Sheila you were there for me in a way no one else was. When you asked me the other night, I could've said yes, to dinner. But it was...." She took a breath. "I know you didn't mean it this way. But it was almost like you expected a reward from me. A cookie for good feminist behavior."

Rafael stared. He looked as if he wanted to protest, sharply, and then he looked stricken.

"I wasn't—"

"I know. It was—the situation, the timing. If I'd said yes then, I would've felt like we were...playing into a narrative I don't buy. I know you don't buy it, either, because you've always, always respected my choices. Even when they didn't match your hopes."

If he'd been about to speak, he fell silent. His eyes brightened at their edges, and the helpless look was back, the one from the elevator. Olivia held up a hand as if by doing so she could forestall pain. There'd been enough of that. Too much of it. 

"After I got home, I thought about how it could've been. If I'd said yes. I realized most of what was holding me back came down to fear." Fear that relationships were things that ended, whether she wanted them to or not. She looked at him. "I don't want to live my life like that. It's against my principles."

He mustered his softest crooked smile. "Fearless Liv."

She shook her head. "It's not gone, I'm just—tired of it letting it boss me around. Keep me from grabbing hold of a good thing. You, you're not a thing." She cupped his knee. "A good man. Who cares with the most honest, truest heart, not just about me, about everything I believe in—" Her voice wobbled. Heat welled in her eyes and stung. She let go of Rafael to wipe them clumsily. "Okay, wow. That was articulate." 

"Articulate enough for me." The crooked smile hadn't disappeared, though it too was looking wobbly. Wobbly and a little watery. Rafael cleared his throat. "Strictly speaking, you haven't grabbed. When you're ready I'd encourage more grabbing."

"Carpe diem?" She smiled and brushed back her hair. "I'd ask you to stay tonight, but—"

He shook his head slowly, refuting the existence of any agenda other than hers. "Whatever you want. However you want to do this."

"I really don't want to have to worry about...noise." She nodded toward Noah's bedroom. Rafael kept his face sober, almost deadpan. 

"Understandable. I could be a screamer."

Huffing, she batted his chest. "You are not." The thump of contact reminded her how very solid he was, how warmly and immediately present. She spread her hand on the place she'd thumped to smooth it over, then let her fingers curl. "Are you?"

He tilted his head coyly. "Have to wait and find out."

How she'd waited so long already was a miracle of sheer pigheadedness. Leaning, she slid her hand around to his side. 

"C'mere," she said.

Rafael made a quiet sound and let himself be drawn. With a sigh Olivia laid her chin on his shoulder, wrapped her arms around his middle, felt his arms come around her in tentative response. One of his hands rested on her back. The other lifted. It hovered on her hair before alighting, then clutched gently at a palmful of strands. 

It felt good to hold him. Good to hold a man—her animal body reveled in the press and scent of him—and for it to be this man. His earlobe curved close to her nose, flushed pink. His soft grip on her hair shifted, over and over, less to caress than to reassure itself of what it grasped. She nuzzled his shoulder. 

"Thank you," she murmured. "For waiting for me."

"Um, worth it," he said faintly. She puffed a laugh.

"Well, give yourself a minute to decide."

His head moved from side to side against hers. "I knew a long time ago."

Olivia drew back enough to look at him. "You always were quick." She fitted a hand to the side of his face, thumb brushing his cheek. She studied his carefully coiffed hair. "How miffed would you be if I messed this up?" she asked, snaking her fingers into the fringe of it. "'Cause I really want to mess it up right now."

"Please do," he said.

*

They didn't get too carried away on the sofa. In the back of Rafael's mind loomed the ever-present specter of Noah toddling sleepy-eyed from the bedroom, only to ask what Uncle Rafa's hand was doing up Mommy's shirt. Or what Mommy's hand was doing down Uncle Rafa's pants, for that matter. He'd never dated a mother with a small child before, let alone been irrevocably in love with one. It created incentives to stay above the belt.

And it was good, impossibly good, just to kiss Olivia, to be kissed by her. To have her breath on his lips and her hands in his hair, disheveling everything. 

When it grew late and the wine was gone, she kissed him as he put on his jacket in the foyer. She tugged his lapels when he got his coat on, making it very hard to button up. 

"Think about the weekend," she told him. "I'll see if Lucy's free. Maybe we can get out for a while. Spend a little time at your place?"

"Are you suggesting what I think you are?" he purred, and she poked him in the ribs and said _you bet I am._ She kissed him once more, lingering, as he swooned out the door.

In the elevator he got some of his breath back. He took a halfhearted swipe at fixing his hair, then thought _fuck it._ Let the world see what she did to him. Let the city be his witness. Walk of shame be damned—walk of pride would be closer. Walk of Olivia Benson wanted him to be hers, hers, hers, and here was the evidence on his person, incontrovertible. 

Outside her building his soles barely skimmed the pavement. He'd take the subway, maybe, or at least walk for a while before getting a Lyft. For once the cold couldn't touch him. He stood at the crosswalk, rocking from heel to toe, and launched forward at the change of the light.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the extended mix of a drabble written for thebarsondaily prompt: _horoscope._ The original drabble can be found [here.](http://unicornmagic.tumblr.com/post/176966513029)
> 
> Comments are treasured!


End file.
